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Battle of New Orleans cannon getting new carriage

Louisiana
Published 6:39 p.m. CT Sept. 30, 2014

Abry Brothers foreman Melvin Erazo, lower left, John Menasco, center, carpenter foreman for the Louisiana State Museum, and Wade Levy, right, the museum's maintenance head, guide a 2.8-ton cannon used at the Battle of New Orleans onto a new carriage Tuesday in New Orleans. The remounting was part of preparations for the museum's exhibit about the War of 1812.
(Photo:
AP
)

NEW ORLEANS – Pulleys, chains and human muscle have lowered a nearly 3-ton Spanish cannon used in the Battle of New Orleans onto a new gun carriage like one that once might have held it on a naval ship.

For generations, the 10½-foot-long weapon has sat on three big wooden blocks in New Orleans’ French Quarter, outside the Cabildo — part of the Louisiana State Museum.

Museum director Mark Tullos says nothing is known about the cannon’s history before it became part of Gen. Andrew Jackson’s defenses at Chalmette for the battle on Jan. 8, 1815.

He says its shape and markings suggest that it was a naval cannon made in Spain.

“This was a pretty common model,” he said.

It might have been commandeered from a ship. It might have been mounted at Fort St. John, also known as Old Spanish Fort. It might have been brought in by Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who, along with many of their followers, brought the U.S. forces artillery and thousands of the gun flints needed to keep rifles firing in exchange for pardons on piracy charges. Lafitte’s Baratarians manned two 24-pound cannons and a 32-pounder during the battle, according to “The Pirates Lafitte” by William C. Davis.

There’s no documentation for this cannon’s location before the battle, Tullos said, adding that any suggestion is pure speculation.

Tuesday’s move is part of preparations for the museum’s exhibit about the War of 1812. The new carriage is modeled after some at the Chalmette battlefield, now part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, with other research-based details, Tullos said.

“One of the things I found fascinating is that the carriage was designed to be disassembled and put in carts to go to another location,” he said. The cannon itself would have traveled in another cart.

During early stages of readying the cannon, a 24-pound cannonball and ceramic shards packed in as shrapnel were found inside it.

Those date from the Civil War, when the cannon was used at Fort St. John as part of the unsuccessful defense against a squadron led by David Farragut, who had fought as a boy in the War of 1812 and who was made the U.S. Navy’s first admiral after taking New Orleans in April 1862.

“During the war it was thrown into Bayou St. John,” Tullos said. It may have been sunk after the city was captured, but there’s no record of the reason, he said.

“It was raised in 1872 to return it to the Spanish Fort, as a display piece,” he said.

It was given to the Louisiana State Museum in 1906 and put on display two years later. It now faces Jackson Square, in front of the Cabildo. A museum photograph from 1934 shows it on a similar block in the courtyard behind the Cabildo, Tullos said.